


The Mixtape

by noiproksa



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Powers, Canon Compliant, Dean's Top 13 Zepp Traxx Mixtape, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 16:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19176754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noiproksa/pseuds/noiproksa
Summary: Castiel is not used to being ‘alone’ inside his own head. The absence of the constant chatter from ‘Angel radio’ leaves him struggling to adjust. Luckily, Dean has got his back, as always.For the prompt: Castiel is listening to the mixtape for the first time.(Intended as gen, but can be read as Destiel pre-slash.)





	The Mixtape

Castiel tried to focus on what the Winchesters were saying, but the annoying sound inside his head was drowning everything else out.

They were all sitting around the map table in the war room, going through their options on how best to overpower the… vampire or werewolf, or whatever monster they were after this week. Castiel had lost the thread of conversation a while ago.

He put his fingers against his temple, and covertly let some grace flow through his vessel in order to try to alleviate the headache.

When he looked up again, Dean had stopped talking and was staring at him, a frown creasing his forehead. Maybe he had asked a question, so Castiel used a tactic he had learned in his years surrounded by humans: deflection.

“I agree,” he stated. Humans loved it when others agreed with them, and Dean especially.

“You do?” Dean asked, raising his eyebrows. Obviously, he wasn’t fooled for a second. Throwing a look at Sam, Dean continued, “So, we’re all in agreement that Cas here is going to do all the chores around the bunker from now on?”

Sam ducked his head in a futile attempt to hide a grin, which was how Castiel knew that they were pulling his wing. (No, wait. That couldn’t be right, humans didn’t have wings.—They were pulling his… arm?)

“Cas?” Dean’s voice brought him out of his musings on human idioms.

“Yes. About that…” Which monster were they after again? “…monster…”

Time to forget about the strange sound and concentrate on the hunt…

***

Only he couldn’t forget about it because it followed him everywhere.

Over the next few days, he had to use his grace constantly to get relief, if only for a moment. It was starting to get exhausting, especially since healing himself didn’t even seem to be working.

Castiel tried to think back to when it had started, and he realized that it had progressively been getting worse for a very long time.

While Castiel was pondering about these things, someone knocked on his door, and a moment later Dean came in.

“Here you are,” he said, then flopped down on a chair uninvited and went on to complain about Sam’s rabbit food which, if Dean was to be believed, took away all the space in the kitchen.

Castiel marveled at the fact that Dean always came whenever he needed him the most. He listened more to the sound of Dean’s voice than to the actual words. He liked listening to Dean’s voice. It was a soothing noise that had the added benefit of easing his headache.

“Okay—what’s going on?” Dean asked, interrupting his own tirade about how pie was nutritious.

Since Dean would know if he lied anyway, Castiel decided to answer truthfully. “There is this sound that won’t go away,” he explained, massaging his temples with his fingers as he spoke.

“Oo-kay,” Dean said slowly.

They fell into silence and as if on cue, the headache intensified.

“What kind of a sound?” Dean prodded.

“It sounds like… nothing.”

“Nothing?” Dean repeated.

Of course, he didn’t understand. How _could_ a human understand? Nevertheless, Castiel tried to offer a better explanation.

“It’s the absence of sound. You have to understand: For angels—there are always sounds inside our heads, sometimes even too many. ‘Angel radio,’ you call it. But it is more than that. You can’t just turn it on and off like a ‘radio.’ It is always there, a sort of calming background noise that keeps us all interlinked.”

“And now it’s not there?” Dean asked when Castiel paused in his explanation.

“A lot of my brothers and sisters have died.—It is too quiet inside my head. Unnaturally quiet.”

Castiel closed his eyes and listened carefully, but there was nothing to listen to. Only the grating sound of deafening silence echoed back, taunting him. It was as if some part of him was missing.

And then it struck him—loneliness. Of course, that was a human emotion. He should not be able to feel lonely. Then again, he wasn’t supposed to feel a lot of things…

For a fleeting instant of eternity, he wondered if his remaining brothers and sisters were feeling it, too.

When his mind returned to the here and now, Castiel realized that he was not only alone inside his head, but also in his room.

He had been foolish to think a human might ever be able to understand. Humans were _always_ alone inside their own heads. They were used to socializing using words and body language and physical things—not feeling each other’s presence inside their minds. Dean must have thought him crazy for missing something he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

***

As it turned out, he should not have underestimated Dean and the bond they shared.

The very same evening, Dean stopped by his room again.

Castiel had just tried to heal himself once more in vain. There was no wound to heal. Only an emotional one and angels weren’t even supposed to _have_ emotions.

“If I want to forget about all the shit that happens,” Dean started before Castiel could even properly greet him. “Clear my head—or, in your case, I guess, _fill_ your head with sounds or voices or whatever—I listen to music.”

He brought out his hands that had been hidden behind his back, and held something out to Castiel. It was a cassette, and when Castiel took it, turning it around to look at it from all sides, he saw that Dean had scribbled ‘Dean’s top 13 Zepp TRAXX’ on it.

“These are some of the best songs the human race has come up with,” Dean claimed. “Always does the trick for me.”

Then he held out an odd-looking device, headphones dangling off it. “You’ll need that to listen to it. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

He was clearly excited about sharing this with Castiel, and even though material things were completely irrelevant, Castiel held the cassette in his hands almost as if it were as important as his angel blade.

Humans gave each other material things to show that they cared about each other, Castiel knew. To show that they thought about each other. Dean was trying to cheer him up with this. He had understood after all.

“Okay, come on!” Dean motioned him over when Castiel was still standing frozen to the spot by the door.

Castiel hurried over and sat down on his bed, propped up against the headboard, and let Dean show him how to put the headphones into his vessel’s ears.

Then Dean put the cassette into the device, pushed a button, and a song that sounded familiar came through the headphones and filled his head. They had listened to that song in the Impala on their way to hunts on multiple occasions. The message seemed clear enough: They should ‘ramble on.’

Dean was standing next to the bed, grinning down at him self-satisfied. Then he motioned towards the door and mouthed, “Have fun,” before he took a few steps towards the door.

But Castiel said, loud enough to be heard over the music, “You can stay.”

He carefully phrased it as a suggestion, open to rejection, even though he liked how not-lonely he felt with Dean right next to him.

Dean shrugged and kicked off his boots. Then he climbed onto the bed next to Castiel and took one of the earphones out of his ear and put it into his own so that he could listen to the music as well.

Sitting next to each other, their shoulders touching, they let the music engulf them.

Sometimes, Castiel had problems understanding the meaning behind some words. Those times—as if Dean knew it without Castiel uttering a word—he would throw in a comment to explain the meaning of the words. (Once, the man singing the song said, “ _I wonder if you know what I'm talkin' about._ ” Castiel did not, but Dean did not offer up an explanation that time.)

Castiel had not truly expected such a human concept to work on him, but he was surprised to notice that after a while he hardly heard the absence of sound inside his head anymore. He began to understand why humans loved music... realizing that it was very similar to the ‘Angel radio’ he had been missing, and, for the first time in what seemed like forever, Cas smiled as he felt his vessel relax.

They had been sitting there for quite a while—Castiel had counted ten different melodies, and he assumed that meant they were nearing the end, if the ‘top 13’ was correct.

_When mountains crumble to the sea_

_There will still be you and me._

Castiel did not need Dean to translate human music into coherent English for that sentence. He had seen mountains rise and fall plenty of times over the millennia. But what stuck with him was the second part of the sentence: “There will still be you and me.”

Technically, Dean would not be alive with Castiel to witness the next mountain crumble. But, maybe it was a sort of promise that Dean’s inevitable death—no matter if it happened sooner or later—would not be the end of their friendship. If Dean had thought about what the words meant at all.

_Tears of love lost in the days gone by_

Before Dean and Sam had come into his life, Castiel had not truly known the meaning of familial love. But they had adopted him, no matter that they weren’t even the same species, accepting him, all the things included that had to seem weird to them, just as human customs still seemed weird to Castiel.

_Together we shall go until we die._

Feeling his vessel’s eyes sting and something running down his cheek, Castiel touched his face. When he looked at his hand, he realized that it had come away wet. Touching his cheek again, he let healing energy flow to take care of his leaking eyes. The next second, however, new liquid was running down his cheek.

“Dean!” he made Dean aware of the situation who was sitting next to him, eyes closed, mouthing along the words.

When he opened his eyes to see what was going on, Castiel showed him his wet fingers and said, “My vessel’s eyes are malfunctioning.”

Dean smiled at him—but it was a soft smile; he wasn’t mocking Castiel or laughing about him. He just said, “Yeah, that might happen.”

If Dean was not freaking out about it, Castiel decided, there was no reason for him to do so either. He appreciated that Dean didn’t even try to explain about tears. Of course, Castiel knew _humans_ had the ability to produce tears. But his vessel should not bow to human needs.

“Don’t worry about it. Means it’s working.” When Dean leaned back again, he let more of his weight rest against Castiel, a casual reminder that he was not alone. And without a care in the world, Dean started to sing along, “Happiness: no more be sad. Happiness: I’m glad.”

And Castiel realized that he was. Sitting here, filling his head with another kind of sound, one that drowned out the sound of nothingness, Dean next to him, looking carefree and happy for once, too… Castiel couldn’t help but smile, even as he felt another tear slowly run down the side of his vessel’s face.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Castiel remembered that humans did not only cry when they were in pain. There was such a thing as ‘tears of joy,’ too.

Dean was still singing along, a little off-key, when the song repeated, “ _There will still be you and me._ ”

And Castiel decided: There always would be.

_The End._

 

I also made a vid to go along with the fic:

 

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and kudos make my day. <3


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